Gospel text (Lk 12,35-38):Jesus said to his disciples, «(…) Happy are those servants whom the master finds wide-awake when he comes. Truly, I tell you, he will put on an apron and have them sit at table and he will wait on them. Happy are those servants if he finds them awake when he comes at midnight or daybreak!».

Economy and ethics: moral imperatives of the economic activity

Fr.
Antoni
CAROL i Hostench
(Sant Cugat del Vallès, Barcelona, Spain)

Today, we should ask ourselves if in an economic crisis the most serious side is the “deficit of employment” (high “unemployment rate”) or rather the “deficit of work” (falling asleep at work with decreasing professional quality). Answer: the deficit of professional responsibility (at various professional and political levels) is one of the leading causes of the economic stagnation. And the cure lies in the ethical growth, since economic activity is profoundly moral.

Economic reversals are not alien to the moral crisis (“moral underdevelopment”): the lack of moderation and parsimony restrain investment capacity; laziness, passivity and corruption in the professional work are a deadly cancer for the productivity and the creative innovation…

- God entrusted man with the Creation so that he may administer it. We are all – at one level or another – administrators of the “Garden of Eden” (that we must preserve and cultivate). Therefore Jesus’ admonition is not negligible: keep awake!, work well!, manage efficiently the work of the Father!